(Image credit: Submitted by Victoria Harrison)
Meal planning takes practice and patiences to master and, like most worthwhile endeavors, requires some studying. Whether you’re new to meal planning or a veteran meal planner, learning these five essential lessons will help you plan breakfasts, lunches, and dinners for a brighter week.
Look, no one is ever going to marry me for my pavlova. (I mean, talking about dodging a bullet…) This one was particularly underachieving. First, I thought I’d be clever and try to add the cocoa at the start, mixed with the sugar, so that it would mix the best. Nope! It never fully whipped. With this in the trash, I began my next one, breaking an egg yolk right into the white. I can usually get it all out (tip! use the empty shell as a scooper/skimmer) but not this time. I started a new bowl and, yup, did it again. Finally, with six uncompromised egg whites and cocoa stirred in only at the very end, ensuring a respectably thick, shiny plume of meringue, I began piling my chocolate plumes on a 9-inch round parchment circle, only to realize this wasn’t very bright, as the meringue would spread. I cut a new, larger square of parchment and used the old one as a sling/tube-of-a-pastry bag to land the new one in a great, elegant swirl and then fell over laughing (and texting everyone I know with the picture because: all grownup here!) because it looked precisely like everyone’s favorite emoji. Smoothed into more of a mound, I baked it at the wrong temperature and it got too crispy and riddled with cracks. Anyone left reading from New Zealand just is doing this right now. (Don’t worry, I retested it — woe is me — to confirm that the correct temperature and times are indeed correct.) 
But I have one thing going for us, and that’s that this pavlova is the most chocolaty I’ve ever had. The apartment air was steeped with eau de brownies, the very best perfume. Even a day layer, this cake of a meringue decadent but not heavy, basically dessert magic. Do not be deceived, as I have been in the past, by the pale beige shade of the outer shell — inside, it’s like a truffle with the impact of and the texture of a pillow. 
(Image credit: Joseph Campbell)
My 8-year-old nephew is all knees and elbows and protruding ribs. This is partly due to the fact that he’s 8 and growing an inch every day, it seems, but also because he’s a finicky eater. This is not to say he doesn’t like to eat, but rather that he’s extremely picky.
He gives nuts of any kind a hard pass and he prefers his burger to be cheese-free, but loves fried calamari and pickled onions. Go figure. He also tries to sneak sips of my sister’s morning coffee and brother-in-law’s beer whenever he can.
His repertoire is constantly expanding — shrimp and clams fra diavolo is a current favorite and he’s recently discovered cappuccino ice cream — but there’s one food that will always be number one. And that is chocolate.
That’s why I recruited him to try out Godiva’s new line of single-origin chocolate bars, G by Godiva.
(Image credit: Christine Han)
Egg boats are the breakfast sandwich you wish you’ve been eating all along. This new take on the classic sausage, egg, and cheese mixes the trio into a custardy filling that’s baked together in a hollowed-out mini-baguette.
(Image credit: Christine Han)
Breakfast sandwiches can be stacked between a split roll or biscuit, stuffed into a pita, rolled into a burrito, even folded into a tidy closed quesadilla pocket, but as I recently learned, there’s one sandwich we’ve been neglecting for far too long: the breakfast boat.
Bulking up the freezer with breakfast options is one of the secrets to successful meal planning. Costco and an afternoon of cooking is the secret to making freezer breakfasts to last my family a month.
Here’s how a trip to Costco and one afternoon of work can save breakfast — one freezer sandwich at a time.
(Image credit: Villa Palmier)
From Apartment Therapy → The Open Shelving of Your Kitchen Dreams Is Totally In Your Budget
(Image credit: Christine Han)
For a vegan breakfast sandwich that will power you through the morning, look to this pita pocket stuffed with a blend of spiced chickpeas and sautéed veggies. It’s prepared in advance, then stashed in the freezer, ready to be reheated in the oven while you buzz through your morning routine.
You just couldn’t resist that last crate of tomatoes at the farm stand, could you? They called to you, pick me, pick me, pick me! Well, now what?
I love the simplicity of this late-summer soup. Tomatoes, onions, white beans, a little cheese, and basil. That’s all, folks.
My favorite part of our trip to Portugal is that it was almost accidental. Like we have done almost every summer, in the spring we began looking for a house to rent on one fork or another of Long Island because it us. Frustrated by prices and lack of appealing inventory (“which kid should stay in the dark basement bedroom where we won’t hear their screams?” is definitely the conversation every parent wants to have before forking over more than a month’s rent for the honor) our friends confessed that they couldn’t stop thinking about going somewhere like Spain and Portugal, where we could rent a villa for significantly less money and, you know, go see another part of the world. I said yes. My husband said “but 8 hours on a plane with a baby!” and “she’s going to burst into flames on a beach!” (referring to me passing on my unfortunate pallor to our youngest) and then I starting getting all insufferably philosophical about how this is our life and we have two kids and we either learn how to take big vacations with them or we’re never going to see all the places we want to see in our lifetime … and then I said “you can totally blame me if this is terrible.” And somehow that did the trick. Let me know when you want me to write that marital advice book, okay? 
We regret nothing and I’d be lying if I didn’t say that the fact I didn’t make dinner once wasn’t part of the charm. We’d manage breakfast and lunch at home but found the restaurants to be very kid-friendly, almost all having an official or unofficial children’s menu.* Plus, there was a natural kindness and patience with children that is less the norm here — you know when you’re waiting for the check and everyone is tired and your kid is about to scream their head off on your shoulder and then they start giggling because a stranger behind you is making faces at them? That was every day. Continue reading
